Out now! In Laura's novel Mud and Glass, life is straightforward for Dr. Celeste Carlucci, a professor at Krasnia's finest university. She wants tenure. She wants to know why the Purple River delta disappears as fast as the river can create it. And she wants to maintain her problematic friendship with her colleague, the feisty and infamous Dr. Hypatia "Pace" Garoux. Straightforward, that is, until Pace involves Celeste in her research. Before she knows it, Celeste is being shot at from a hovering helicopter, knifed in an abduction attempt, attacked on a moonlit mountain path, and followed by shadowy minions — all because she and Pace are on the trail of the Littoral Codex, an ancient and indecipherable book, and the key to understanding it: a set of glass tablets, long thought lost, that can reveal the book's hidden text. The race is on between Celeste and a collection of odd and alarming foes to bring the book and the tablets together at last! Mud and Glass combines riotous adventure, a fond satire of academic life, and a stirring manifesto of resistance against a nascent totalitarian regime.
"Mud and Glass is a glorious screwball comedy that propels readers headlong through college classrooms, mysterious underground passages, and the halls of a retirement home with insouciant abandon. Along the way we meet a charming cast of heroes and rogues all chasing after a lost manuscript, which may either be a McGuffin or the font of all knowledge. A motley cast of wacky academics, rogue librarians, ninja students, insubordinate security guards and clueless bureaucrats is presided over by the winsome geographer Celeste, a protagonist who puts the luck in pluck. Join her for romance and intrigue, purloined theses and homemade cookies in Laura E. Goodin's hilarious new novel." — James Patrick Kelly, winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards
"Hijinks in the groves of academe! Concerning matters of tenure, footnotes and postgrad research, along with a secret underground society of librarians, a mysterious Codex in need of a key and an evil Board of Governors seeking total domination of (first) the university and (then) the universe. Shades of Tom Sharpe! A barrel-load of fun!" — Richard Harland, award-winning author of Worldshaker and The Black Crusade
"Mud and Glass is a glorious comedic romp, scything through the sententiousness of the academic world while showcasing modesty, courage and cleverness as virtues. I've not read comedy this clever since Jasper Fforde." — Russell Kirkpatrick, author of the acclaimed science-fiction trilogies Fire of Heaven and Husk
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Check out Laura's debut novel! In After the Bloodwood Staff, the sedentary and impractical Hoyle meets Sybil Alvaro in a used bookstore, and she invites him to follow in the footsteps of her favourite author in a search for the mysterious Bloodwood Staff. He's spent his entire life reading vintage adventure action, and thinks he knows how these things should go. However, in the mountains west of Sydney, his expectations are almost immediately derailed, as nobody — not Sybil, and certainly not the irrepressible Ada Drake, stand-in for the obligatory plucky urchin — behaves the way they're supposed to. As they gradually realise that their lighthearted adventure has put themselves and their loved ones in dire peril, Hoyle is forced to face the fact that he is woefully unsuited to be the stereotypical hero — but that he has no choice.
A deliberate subversion of adventure, fantasy and satire tropes, After the Bloodwood Staff is a brilliant and unexpected ride.
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"After the Bloodwood Staff is a rousing, rollicking adventure that simultaneously celebrates and deconstructs rousing, rollicking adventures. By adding modern depth and humor, Goodin takes the old H. Rider Haggard template and creates something utterly fresh and fun.Anyone who loves classic derring-do (or loves rousing and rollicking, for that matter) shouldn't miss it." — Steve Hockensmith, New York Times-bestselling author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls and the Holmes on the Range series
"I thoroughly enjoyed this book, utter respite from all the doom and gloom bombarding us all from the interwebs in recent months." — Cat Sparks, Aurealis and Ditmar Award-winning author of Lotus Blue, published by Talos Press
"After the Bloodwood Staff explicitly pays homage to classic adventure tales, but at the same time cocks numerous snooks at them. With its thoroughly unheroic hero, its obsessive expedition leader, its colourful ensemble of hangers-on and antagonists, and, at its centre, the enigmatic, capricious staff itself, the novel rollicks along, maintaining a delicate, hilarious balance between twenty-first-century pragmatism and a yearning for a nobler past. Good fun." — Margo Lanagan, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Tender Morsels and Sea Hearts
"Jimmy's Boys" honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest, third quarter, 2011
"An Ear for Home" published in the Eneit Press anthology Baggage, September 2010
"Turcotte's Battle" published in Wet Ink #19, July 2010; reprinted December 2011 on author Anna Tambour's web site (read it here)
"Loving the Gorgon" published on Shades of Sentience web site, November 16, 2009; also published in their subsequent print anthology, Shades of Sentience (2010, buy it here)
"The Salvation of the Ooze" awarded first place, Conflux 2007 Short-Story Competition (read it here)
Plays and Libretti
"Lockdown" performed at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, March 21, 2021.
"Useless Questions" performed at Theatre@First, Somerville, MA, January 20, 2018.
"Tales of Discovery" performed at the Melbourne Composers League "Elbow Room" concert, Melbourne, VIC, November 12, 2017.
"Captain Tom Zombie and the Unlikely Shipmate" performed at Conflux Speculative Fiction Convention, Canberra, ACT, October 2-5, 2015.
"Useless Questions" performed at Conflux Speculative Fiction Convention, Canberra, ACT, October 5-6, 2014
"Useless Questions" performed at Thistle Dew Dessert Theatre, Sacramento, CA, February 2014
Comets and Chocolates performed at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, NSW, September 2013
The Death of Albatross performed at the Phoenix Theatre in Wollongong, NSW, March 2012
"The Box" and "The Second Chance" performed as part of Opera Prometheus's Promfest, November 2011
The Death of Albatross performed as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival, September 8-10, 2011
"Hold" performed as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival, September 2010
"Tiles in the Night" performed in the Gone in 60 Seconds international play festival, June 11, 2010, Halifax (UK)
"Three Feet from Doom" performed in the Gone in 60 Seconds international play festival, June 5, 2009, Leeds (UK)
"Hold" broadcast nationally by ABC Local Radio, January 2, 2009
"Real Shakespeare" premiered at Wollongong Workshop Theatre's 24-hour Theatre Event, June 2008
The Death of Albatross selected for the Merrigong Theatre Script Development Program, June 2008
"Don't Know Much" short-listed for the 2008 Sydney Short & Sweet festival
"The Salad of Success" selected for Wollongong Workshop Theatre's Workshorts program, October-November 2007
"The Salad of Success" selected for BUGfest, October 2007
"Foul Play in Dapto" premiered by TheatreMax Studio, December 9, 2006
Poems
"Is Not This Love?" (work in collaboration with Houston Dunleavy) performed at The Studio Flute Tree, Leichardt, NSW, by Wendy Dixon, Michael Halliwell, and David Miller, October 26, 2013
"To the Person Who Left a Note on My Windshield", as set by Houston Dunleavy, performed at the Australian Society of Music Educators Conference, September 29, 2013
"The Monster Triptych" performed at The Vault Cabaret, Port Kembla, NSW, July 21, 2012
The poem cycle "Keep Trying" performed as part of Opera Prometheus's Promfest, November 2011, and again as part of Opera at the Phoenix, Wollongong, NSW, July 2012
"Lent", "The Transit of Venus", "Thirroul Beach", "Child of Promise", "Four Carols", "Earth and Space", "A Full Moon Tonight and I Am Awake on the Train", "To the Holy Spirit" set for choral and chamber groups and performed at various venues (from 1998 to present)
"Many Colors" published in the Washington Post, September 21, 2004
Listen to Laura performing her poem "To the Person Who Left a Note on My Windshield" at the home of slam, Chicago's Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, in 2012.
